Books Bulletin

 "The Note" begins with a stranger.

Three friends are vacationing in the Hamptons; they have identified a parking space in a crowded area. They wait for the other car to back out. But--suddenly--a third car emerges. The driver of the third car *steals* the parking space. Worse, he seems to smirk at the friends as he walks away.

Appalled by this uncivil behavior, the three friends hatch a plan. They will leave a note on the stranger's windshield; the note will say, "He is cheating on you. He always cheats." This will cause turmoil in the stranger's relationship. Don't get mad, get even.

Later, on the news, a story interrupts "our normal coverage." A man in the Hamptons is dead--murdered. As the three friends watch, they realize that this corpse is the stranger who stole the parking space.

It's clearly important to come forward, share details with the police. But each of the three friends would prefer not to admit to immature behavior. One is a law partner who became media fodder when she got involved in a slightly more complicated version of the "Central Park Birder" incident. Another was embroiled in a MeToo, or MeToo-adjacent, melodrama. The third seemed tangentially linked to a murder. The friends call themselves "the Cancelled Crew"; they really don't want any attention, and they suspect they can sweep the "note business" under the rug.

Alafair Burke found her inspiration in the DC Townhouse Murder. Like Burke, I'm obsessed with this murder. (If you don't know about it, Google "Robert Wone.") What's strange about the DC case is that three friends are clearly involved, but no one can "weaken" the triangle. (Generally, if you're chipping away at three people, one vertex of the triangle will "turn on" the other two. That hasn't happened with the Robert Wone story.)

I really like Burke's interest in courtrooms, IVF questions, COVID, social media messiness. She knows how to be topical. On the other hand, in this current book, she seems more invested in plot than in character. At times, the three leads seem like pawns; there is something overly clinical in the narrator's tone.

Still, it's a fun near-miss. I'll probably pick up Burke's next book....whatever that might be.